For Ted Turner and John Malone, Acres by the Millions

Saturday

Jan 29, 2011 at 5:09 AM

Two media moguls, John C. Malone and Ted Turner, are also the two largest private landowners in the United States.

KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

John C. Malone, a media mogul who is on the verge of buying nearly one million acres of timberland in Maine, could soon become the largest private landowner in the United States, catapulting him ahead of Ted Turner on the list of those who accumulate earth the way others accumulate, say, bison.

Mr. Malone, who lives in Colorado, is chairman of Liberty Media and has extensive holdings in QVC, the cable channel; Expedia.com, the travel Web site; and Sirius XM satellite radio. Liberty Media also owns the Atlanta Braves, which Mr. Turner once owned. Last year, Forbes ranked Mr. Malone as the 110th richest person in America, and though he has been an aggressive media player for decades, he has operated largely out of the limelight.

He intends to keep the land as a working forest, aides said, and will continue to supply timber to local paper mills and keep the land open to the public for recreation. Environmentalists are “cautiously optimistic” that Mr. Malone will not develop the land, said Cathy Johnson of the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

Mr. Malone owns various parcels of land around the country, including more than 68,000 undeveloped acres in Maine and the 290,000-acre Bell Ranch in New Mexico. Once he buys roughly 980,000 acres in Maine’s North Woods and about 20,000 acres in neighboring New Hampshire, under a deal to be completed by Tuesday, he will own 2.1 million acres nationwide.

Mr. Turner, who is a longtime friend of Mr. Malone’s, owns about 2 million acres in the United States, much of it ranch land, and he also owns about 100,000 acres in Argentina. He raises more than 50,000 head of bison across his various ranches and has long reigned as America’s No. 1 land holder.

“The odds are, when the tabulations are done and this transaction closes, Mr. Malone definitely will be America’s largest landowner,” said Eric O’Keefe, editor of The Land Report, a magazine that keeps track of such things.

Mr. O’Keefe said that many of the vast landholders of today were not in the same mold as the robber barons of yore.

“I’m sure there’s some alpha male in there, but they’re making the planet a better place,” he said. “It’s about stewardship.”

Mr. Malone did not return calls seeking comment, and Mr. Turner was “off the grid,” an assistant said, and not available.

Mr. Malone is buying the land from GMO Renewable Resources for an undisclosed price. John Cashwell, a consultant in Maine who is helping with the transaction, said the land came with a long-term wood-supply contract with Verso paper mills.

“It’s a working forest that will supply jobs for hundreds of woodcutters and truckers in this state and the employees of two paper mills,” he said. He said Mr. Malone would keep it as sustainably managed forestland. And by allowing public access, he said, Mr. Malone would not receive a tax break, but the state provides some liability protection for personal injuries, such as snowmobile accidents.

Frank Janusz, the owner of the Airline Lodge and Snack Bar in rural Hancock County, where much of Mr. Malone’s new land is located, had just returned Friday from grooming 40 miles of snowmobile trails.

“Without the snowmobile business, six to eight people would lose their jobs right here,” he said, adding that access to the land was critical.

“We’d die without it,” he said.

While the purchases of huge tracts of land are striking, they are not all that uncommon in Maine, 95 percent of which is privately owned. Of the state’s 19.5 million acres, 17.7 million are forest land.

“I haven’t talked to anyone who is really alarmed about it,” said Phil White, a retired game warden, who was having coffee Friday at the Airline.

The land, which is not all contiguous, includes rounded hills that are now covered in snow and clad in green spruce and fir trees, as well as stark maples and birch. It is bisected by salmon rivers and dotted with lakes filled with brook trout and smallmouth bass and is home to moose, bears and lynx.

Alan Hutchinson, executive director of the Forest Society of Maine, said the purchase was “a very positive indication that the marketplace is still viewing Maine’s forest as a good, solid, long-term asset.”